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. 2023 May 24;9(6):e16621. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e16621

Table 1.

Advantages and limitations of different ELISA methods.

Method Advantages Limitations
Direct ELISA
  • ●

    Cheap

  • ●

    Simple

  • ●

    Elimination of cross reactivity of secondary antibody
  • ●

    Minimal signal amplification

  • ●

    Less specificity

  • ●

    The primary antibody has to be individually labelled, which is time-consuming and expensive

  • ●

    Primary antibody label selection is inflexible from one experiment to another.
Indirect ELISA
  • ●

    Flexible to use variety of antibodies

  • ●

    Simple

  • ●

    Elimination of cross reactivity of secondary antibody
  • ●

    Cross-reactivity might occur with the secondary antibody, resulting in non-specific signal

  • ●

    Time consuming and more expensive
Competitive ELISA
  • ●

    High sensitivity

  • ●

    Suitable for complex samples

  • ●

    Flexibility
  • ●

    Difficulties to find another protein that be recognized by primary antibody
Sandwich ELISA
  • ●

    High specificity

  • ●

    Suitable for impure samples
  • ●

    False positive results

The information in this table was summarised from multiple scientific publications [58,59].